That is strange.  I have been using the play list for years and have only ever had projects stay open if something changed,  and the asterisk is the indicator. 
Does it happen on every song you load Joden?  Perhaps just save a couple of simple projects with just a stereo track in them and see if it still happens.  If it  still does then you would know for sure it is not a plugin. 

I think the songs are supposed to stay loaded. This would seem to be the whole point of the playlist. It needs the songs loaded so as to make them instantly available to play. And I don't think the songs take up that much memory, and now a days we all have a lot under the hood. Most of a CWP file is audio which is not really loaded. The only thing that would hog would be a lot of VST's or samples. So if you plan your projects for live use they can be set to use very little memory. 
I too am staying with using Wave files until I get the playlist sorted out. 
 
Note: when I record our band I have had 25 CWP files open with no problems at all. They are 12 tracks of audio and 1 midi track. I also have pre sets with a few effects in bins. All on a windows 7 64 bit 2008 Sony laptop  only 8 gigs of RAM. 

Cactus Music
I think the songs are supposed to stay loaded. This would seem to be the whole point of the playlist. It needs the songs loaded so as to make them instantly available to play. And I don't think the songs take up that much memory, and now a days we all have a lot under the hood. Most of a CWP file is audio which is not really loaded. The only thing that would hog would be a lot of VST's or samples. So if you plan your projects for live use they can be set to use very little memory. 
I too am staying with using Wave files until I get the playlist sorted out. 
 
Note: when I record our band I have had 25 CWP files open with no problems at all. They are 12 tracks of audio and 1 midi track. I also have pre sets with a few effects in bins. All on a windows 7 64 bit 2008 Sony laptop  only 8 gigs of RAM. 

If the play list is active (click the enable button or E keyboard shortcut) ,  the current song and the next song on the play list will be loaded.  After a song finishes it should close and the next song on the list is loaded.  Unless changes are made to songs there should only be 2 songs open (the current and next song) .  If the play list isn't active,  each song that you click on will load and stay loaded. 
 
That is something I didn't ask you Joden,  but I would assume your play list is active ?  If you are choosing the songs from the play list manually no projects will close automatically. 

Cactus Music
I think the songs are supposed to stay loaded. This would seem to be the whole point of the playlist. It needs the songs loaded so as to make them instantly available to play. And I don't think the songs take up that much memory, and now a days we all have a lot under the hood. Most of a CWP file is audio which is not really loaded. The only thing that would hog would be a lot of VST's or samples. So if you plan your projects for live use they can be set to use very little memory. 
I too am staying with using Wave files until I get the playlist sorted out. 
 
Note: when I record our band I have had 25 CWP files open with no problems at all. They are 12 tracks of audio and 1 midi track. I also have pre sets with a few effects in bins. All on a windows 7 64 bit 2008 Sony laptop  only 8 gigs of RAM. 

Cool, thanks cactus - my lappy I would rate as reasonable for resources (4gig i5 2.6gig - 250gig hdd) which is why I was concerned, but if you say you have had 25 with no probs, that gives me hope haha!

tenfoot
If the play list is active (click the enable button or E keyboard shortcut) ,  the current song and the next song on the play list will be loaded.  After a song finishes it should close and the next song on the list is loaded.  Unless changes are made to songs there should only be 2 songs open (the current and next song) .  If the play list isn't active,  each song that you click on will load and stay loaded. 
 
That is something I didn't ask you Joden,  but I would assume your play list is active ?  If you are choosing the songs from the play list manually no projects will close automatically. 

 
When you say active - I have it as on top of all windows and the songs are set in order of play, using the "wait for keypress" option. Not sure if that constitutes selecting songs manually or not??

Just to chime in again, I use the playlist daily to run live musicals. We once used a control surface to mix each song while playing live. This resulted in each song staying loaded. And yes, it bogged down the system. The tech guys running the show would have to "anticipate" when the next cue needed to play because of the delay that 20 plus songs created. Then at intermission, they would close out all the songs so that it wouldn't be so bad the second half of the show. Needless to say, we don't do that anymore. But we do use the playlist. Sonar sends midi info to the mixing console and lighting console. Currently it is the heart of our tech. It still needs improvement though. We had to stay on Cambridge for most of the year because something got broken in Dorchester, but became usable for us again in Kingston.

thanks jcody - good to know it can work, albeit sans control surface. I may be worrying over nothing, but until someone from CW says it is totally fine having 30 or 40 songs banked up behind the "focus" CWP, then I am going to still have doubts.
 

joden

tenfoot
If the play list is active (click the enable button or E keyboard shortcut) ,  the current song and the next song on the play list will be loaded.  After a song finishes it should close and the next song on the list is loaded.  Unless changes are made to songs there should only be 2 songs open (the current and next song) .  If the play list isn't active,  each song that you click on will load and stay loaded. 
 
That is something I didn't ask you Joden,  but I would assume your play list is active ?  If you are choosing the songs from the play list manually no projects will close automatically. 

 
When you say active - I have it as on top of all windows and the songs are set in order of play, using the "wait for keypress" option. Not sure if that constitutes selecting songs manually or not??

That is exactly how I use the play list for my show Joden so it should work.  I frequently interrupt the play list and load songs though,  so have  often had 12 or so songs to close at the end of a set. This has never caused problems. I don't run VST synth live though -  just Audio tracks with fx plus midi.   I also have my songs saved with a screenset that allows the play list to be in view with the projects beside it.  All of the projects line up so that if I do have several songs open it is very fast to close them by multiple clicks on the project corners. 

Oh the Playlist works, I am just concerned it will crash once I get say, 20+ CWP's sitting in the background. Yes the CWPs will be audio tracks as well as VSTi's, hence my concern. I think, as you wrote, the solution awkaward as it may be, is to close the CWP before selecting the next one to play. Maybe this can be bound to a key...might check that in the bindings.
 
Cheers